[Analysts say the impressive
safety record in Europe and Asia is the result of steady government spending of billions of
dollars on development and maintenance of railroad infrastructure — including
sophisticated electronic monitoring and automated braking systems developed
over the past 20 years.]
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A high-speed train crossing through
10,000 miles of high-speed lines since 2008 — more than the rest of
the world combined.
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PARIS — Across
Europe and East Asia, hundreds of millions of train passengers a year are
routinely whisked, at speeds that often exceed 200 miles an hour, over
extensive rail networks that, for many, present a more reliable and affordable
long-distance alternative than even air travel.
So the fatal derailment of an
Amtrak train last week
in Philadelphia North America , where railway accident rates
have declined steadily to levels that now rival those of the world’s safest
airlines.
In the aftermath of the wreck, even though House Speaker John A.
Boehner dismissed a question about railway funding as “stupid,” analysts say that if there’s one
lesson from abroad for preventing accidents like last week’s, which killed
eight and injured more than 200, it is this: You get what you pay for.
As
a consequence, industry experts say, despite having some of the least-extensive
passenger rail networks in the developed world, the United States South Korea Australia
Analysts say the impressive safety record in Europe and Asia is the result of steady
government spending of billions of dollars on development and maintenance of
railroad infrastructure — including sophisticated electronic monitoring and
automated braking systems developed over the past 20 years.
“You can absolutely see the level of investment in the network
coming through in the annual statistics,” said Christopher Irwin, vice chairman
of the European Passengers’ Federation, a passenger advocacy group based in Belgium
“Constant investment, constant improvement is the driving
thing,” he added. “If you don’t invest, you run the risk of having problems.”
According to the International
Transport Forum of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
the United States invested less than 0.1 percent of its gross domestic product on rail systems in 2013, a quarter of
what was spent by Britain and one-sixth of the investments by France and
Australia.
Over the past decade, even developing countries including India Russia Turkey
Per capita, the United States
By comparison, Japan spent nearly three times as much — more
than $100 per person — with the 28 member countries of the European Union
investing similar sums.
In terms of safety, the return
on that investment has been clear. Japan France
Even in Spain China
“To maintain passenger networks on the scale of Europe or Japan
In Europe , Mr. Perkins said, governments allocated large amounts of
public land to passenger rail networks in the 19th century. These were then
continuously expanded and modernized with broad support from taxpayers and amid
a public recognition of their economic and social value.
The development of United States
Their more consistent upkeep of rail systems has allowed
European and Asian countries to devote a growing share of spending to
state-of-the-art high-speed trains that run on dedicated rail lines fitted with
sophisticated sensors and signal technology.
Those improvements can automatically slow a train if a computer
on board detects that it has exceeded the maximum speed for a given section of
track.
Even on conventional train lines, rail operators are spending
heavily each year to expand the share of their networks that are covered by
such continuous-monitoring systems, known as automatic train protection in Europe , or positive train control in
the United States
“These systems in general are in a more constant state of
renewal,” Steven Harrod, a transportation expert at the Technical University of
Denmark near Copenhagen Europe and Japan
But, he noted, the longer spending is deferred, the more costly
things get. That may be where the United States
“The reality is that as time goes on, any big infrastructure
project gets more expensive because labor rates go up and land gets more
expensive or becomes unavailable because of property development,” Mr. Harrod
said.
He cited the example of Boston
In
the United States
By contrast, consistent spending in European countries that
operate high-speed lines, including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and
Spain, means that more than three-quarters of their tracks and close to 100
percent of their passenger rail traffic are now covered by
continuous-monitoring systems.
Since 2009, the European Union has required that any new
conventional rail lines be equipped with a standardized speed protection
technology, known as the European Train Control System.
So far, about 3,100 miles of European railway tracks are fully
equipped with the technology, while an additional 6,200 miles are either partly
operational or contracted for installation over the coming years, according to
the European Railway Agency. Combined, these represent around 11 percent of Europe ’s roughly 85,700 miles of
railway lines.
A few countries have committed to full coverage of their
national networks by the end of the decade, including Denmark Netherlands Switzerland
Such a system could have helped prevent the fiery crash of a high-speed
train in 2013 near Santiago de Compostela , Spain
Like the Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia
“We still live in the shadow of the accident in Spain
“It really made us think,” he added, “that there are countries
that show a relatively good safety performance that can nevertheless still have
a major accident.”
Despite its spending, Asia , too, has not been immune to accidents. A derailment in 2005 near
Osaka, Japan, that
killed 106 people bore similarities to the Philadelphia
Yet it seems so far to have been an exception, as China
“The lesson,” Mr. Carr said, “is really that we can’t be
complacent.”
Jonathan
Soble contributed reporting from Tokyo Barcelona Spain India
